The fang-tastic vampire comedy prepares to wrap up after six seasons
by Rachel Walz
“What We Do in the Shadows’ is a horror comedy series that started in 2019 as a spin-off/sequel to the original 2014 film by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi. The show is framed as a mockumentary revolving around a small coven of vampires cohabiting a home in Staten Island, New York.
Nandor ‘the Relentless’, played by Kayvan Novak, is the oldest vampire, being a former Persian general in his human life, and acts as the self proclaimed leader of the group. He ignores and mistreats his human familiar Guillermo de la Cruz(played by Harvey Guillen), who usually holds the best advice, is hopelessly in love with Nandor, and harbors a secret; his family is descended from vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing.
The other vampires include Nadja(played by Natasia Demetriou) a Greek and Romani vampire from a small island village who finds the others annoying, and her husband Lazlo Cravensworth(played by Matt Berry), a crass former English nobleman with a taste for theatrics and science. The cast is rounded out by Colin Robinson,(played by Mark Proksch), an ‘energy vampire’ who feeds on people’s energy by boring, aggravating, or annoying them, but can walk and work during the day and thus acts as the breadwinner for the coven.
Together the cast tries to navigate both life among the humans and the supernatural underbelly of the world, with hilarious and messy results. Their antics in the human world range from repeatedly hypnotizing neighbor Sean into forgetting their vampiric activities, to trying to ‘conquer’ Staten Island by running in local elections, to Lazlo hiding out amidst humans as “Jackie Daytona, Normal Human Bartender” merely by sticking a toothpick in his mouth. On the supernatural side, they deal with other vampires, werewolves, ghosts, witches, zombies, sirens, and many other mythical creatures to side-splitting results. Regardless of whether they’re dealing with humans, vampires, or some other form of ghoul, they always seem to bumble their way through situations and wind up little worse for the wear, even if Guillermo has to go full vampire hunter for them to do so.
The series has consistently cropped up as an Emmy nominee since the first season, with 29 nominations, but has only earned a single Emmy for costume design. Yet the series has also won other awards, such as the 2023 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comedy Series; the vampires are pansexual both by nature and by the length of their immortal lives, while Guillermo comes out to his family as gay. With Season 6 confirmed by the creators and network as the final season, hopefully the comedy series can finally be acknowledged as Emmy worthy.
“What We Do in the Shadows” is streaming on Hulu, with Season 6 starting October 21st and the series finale dated for December 16th.
